Review 22.1
1 February - 14 February, 1997

I find most newspaper and magazine columnists these days to be excruciatingly dull. Grey men, grey views, grey writing. Grey, grey, grey. Dull, dull, dull. So you can imagine my delight when I discovered the other week that the Brisbane Courier-Mail has a new fortnightly columnist. She's young and opinionated, she's not a reactionary right-wing git like most of her rival columnists, and from all accounts, she's very widely read. Her name is Helen Darville. And I reckon hers is a name to look out for. Apparently Miss Darville is an author of sorts, although no details of her previous work are given in her first article. I think she might have written a book. She seems to know a lot about the old writing trade, though. Indeed, she seems to know a lot about everything, and she's not shy in reminding us silly old duffers of this.

"One of the current approaches to writers is the vexatious marketing ploy of turning them into film stars," she writes. How true. You often hear of mediocre young writers in this country who make it big because they've got a peculiar selling-point, such as a club foot, or a raging heroin habit, or a penchant for pretending to be a Ukrainian whose grandparents were murdered by Jewish communists. The ensuing freak show is then passed off as high culture, but I'm not fooled, nor, I'm sure, is Miss Darville.

"Someone who writes sensitively and well [I presume Miss Darville is including herself in this category, and why not?] on the vicissitudes [hang on, I'm looking it up] of the human heart is thus asked to comment on the economy."

But Miss Darville isn't going to fall for that one. No, she's only going to write on things that she knows about. These include: "Literature and writing from antiquity to the present; cultural studies; universities and the idea of a university; popular culture; travel; post-modernism; environment and environmental issues; cricket, and miscellaneous". Well, that about covers everything.

She is far more widely read than most - I for one could never have come up with a sentence like this: "I am more interested, for example, in Madonna's way of being in the world (she creates a space, other people put things into that space) than in deciding whether she is 'good' or 'bad'." Call me presumptuous, but I suspect that Miss Darville, in some teensy-weensy way, sees herself as a bit of a Madonna-figure: misunderstood, enormously talented, beyond such hackneyed categories as "good" or "bad". And fair enough too. As my old Ukrainian mum, Frances Margaret Greasodenko, used to say to me, "Sonny, if you aren't willing to tell the world - repeatedly - that you're a better writer than Dostoevsky, then no one else will." (Of course, she used to tell me that in Irish Gaelic, her native tongue.)

"Perhaps I should warn you," she writes - sensitively - "that I am a pessimist (in the next 60 to 100 years the human race will wipe itself out) and an unbeliever (do not trust governments, banks, big business, the media, moneyed lobby groups, et al)." Again, I agree. Trust, and the lack of it, are important issues these days, and I'd like to see Miss Darville tackle this topic not in an abstract sense, as do many "objective" writers, but in a real down-to-earth, close-to-home way.

Far be it from me to suggest what this young woman should be writing, but I think all Australia would be illuminated by an article or two from Miss Darville on how dishonesty and deceitfulness and misplaced trust has affected her obviously full life over the years. I'd also venture at this point that if she really wants to push the boundaries of column writing, she might like to examine, say, any areas in her life where she might have deceived others, and reflect on that. Sensitively, of course.

I was slightly perplexed by the closing paragraph of her first column - "Remember, too, that the opinions expressed in this column are not necessarily those of The Courier Mail or Queensland Newspapers Pty Ltd. On a bad day, they may not even be mine."

Whose might they be? I thought. Those of a little friend who lives in a hatbox on top of her cupboard and speaks in a squeaky voice? Perhaps a gnome-type chap in her front garden? Ah well, I'm sure its just something the lawyers made her put in (Indeed, I seem to recall reading somewhere that she herself is a lawyer) - or perhaps its a literary device. Whatever. Either way, if she's as forthright as she says she is, and she says so quite a few times, then I'm sure she'd never use someone else's opinions without full attribution. She doesn't seem the plagiarising type to me. Being the post-modern gal that she is (did you like the way I wrote that, without having any idea of what it means?) Miss Darville even has her own e-mail address. It seems slightly odd, however, the first part reading "enhdemid". I always thought you used your own name for your address. Who could "h demid" be? Perhaps a post-modern nom de plume. Perhaps it's her little gnome friend. No matter.

Having heaped all of this undoubtedly well-deserved praise upon her head (blonde or red-headed? I cannot determine which from the photo), I eagerly await Miss Darville's well-honed words of wisdom every fortnight. Who knows what's likely to pop out? Three cheers for the Courier-Mail for brightening up our lives!

I have only one objection. One tiny objection. At times in her column, Miss Darville has the tendency OF MOVING INTO LARGE CAPITAL LETTERS LIKE THIS, AS IF SHE IS SHOUTING AT THE READER. As one who has plied his humble trade of journalism for more than a decade now, I'd advise her to drop the blaring capitalised sentences. People who write that way are often assumed to be mentally unbalanced.

NEXT WEEK IN YOUR COURIER-MAIL - Mark "Chopper" Read writes: "I'm too soft-hearted for my own good.